The Last Vegas CES?

I am not sure if it is because I am getting old or because this year it was impossible to see anything with the 140,000 attendees or simply because there were no exciting new technologies, but maybe it is time to stop going to CES? Here's a short summary of what CES 2008 looked like:

• Everybody is manufacturing LCDs and Plasmas
• Everybody is manufacturing GPS devices
• Everybody is manufacturing MP3 and MP4 devices

But if you look around there were no new innovations. There was nothing that really differentiates one from the other and when you walk from booth to booth it started to feel like you see more of the same over and over again. There were dozens of manufactures of iPod accessories (I heard in one of the sessions that this is a 1 billion dollar business). Apple wasn't here (as usual) but I was amazed to see in the International exhibitions all the iPods and iPhones imitations. I'm not talking about devices that "look like" the real thing, but these are devices that look exactly the same down to the packaging and everything. This means that retailers will probably (or already) sell these online for buyers looking for a bargain device so beware of what you buy online. Better buy it from a respected retailer then trying to save 50 bucks.

If all this is not enough there are rumors that CEA will move the show out of Las Vegas It seems that they think they could get a better deal somewhere else, but I'm not sure which other city is capable of handling so many visitors at the same time in addition to the regular tourists. In my opinion this is just a move to negotiate a better price for exhibition space.

I'm writing my final CES 2008 post from the Las Vegas airport which means that I'm about to start my back-to-back "Red-Eye". I'm flying tonight LAS-CLE-RDU landing there tomorrow morning and leaving the same evening to Israel (RDU-EWR-TLV) for another on-board bad sleep night. I don't know why I do this to myself...

CES 2008 Booth Babes

I blogged before about the giveaways of CES 2008. Another very important aspect of the show (that is not related to the technology) is the Booth Babes. You see them in every show and they are very common in CES especially in the north hall where you have all the car entertainment exhibitors. Here's a glimpse of what you've missed:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CES 2008 Freebies

What is a trade show without freebies? CES is a great opportunity to fill your T-shirt supply for the gym. Besides the regular T-shirts and squeeze toys that exhibitors typically give away, one of the more popular giveaways that are available these days are USB flash drives. These drives got so cheap that NBC Universal was giving away a nice small flash drive with 2GB that you could use in the kiosks of their booth to download different NBC TV shows. Another popular booth freebie in this show was coffee! I have to say it is a great giveaway. With the full busy day this convention provides and the night out on the strip you need a lot of coffee. Exhibitors like Yahoo, Logitech and Qualcomm had coffee stands that provided great cappuccinos to everyone. Beck's was a sponsor of the show and they provided free beer every day from 3pm so you could balance the caffeine in your body with that.

But after all the stuff that was thrown in this show I have to give the best giveaway of the show to Jabra. They were a sponsor of CES and they were simply giving away their award winning Jawbone headset for free! All you had to do is to handover your current Bluetooth headset for "recycling" and they gave a you a completely new Jawbone and even helped you pair it with your phone. Too bad I only had with me my Plantronics HS-655 and it is perfect for my BlackBerry so I wouldn't trade itIf I only knew I would have brought the other 2 crappy Bluetooth headsets I have at home. Ho well...there's always another show

CES Day 4 Roundup

I am not sure if everybody left town yesterday or they simply went to the AVN Expo at the Sands, but today you could notice that there are less people in the convention and you can actually walk through the floor and see things. Here is what caught my attention today:

Iqua is a wireless company based out of Finland that was created by a group of Nokia directors. They created a nice looking Bluetooth headset that can be charged using solar power. The BHS-602 has enough juice for 9 talking hours and 200 hours of standby when charged using the regular USB charger, and if you are using it outside it keep on charging itself using the sun. This little headset weighs only 14 grams. It will be released by the end of this month and will retail for $99.

 

The LG booth was huge and show many new things in well designed living areas. They showed the M4210D which is a 42" 1080p LCD monitor and the nice thing about this monitor is that it is capable of displaying 3D video (VGA quality) without the need to wear those stupid glasses. I have to say that it looks pretty good!

In their cellular section I liked the Watch Phone that they showed. It has a pretty slick all black design. Watch this movie that shows how it works and it mind remind you of Dick Tracy

iRobot Looj

iRobot, the creator of the Roomba cleaning robots, demonstrated their gutter cleaning robot. This robot allows you to automatically clean the gutters by simply positioning the robot in the gutter and let it do all the work instead of cleaning manually and keep on moving the leader to clean the next section. It has a detachable handle that can also be used as a wireless remote control and it cleans 60 feet of gutter in about 10 minutes. The Looj comes in three different models:

• Looj 120 - Attaches to your belt with included belt clip for $99.
• Looj 130 - Includes belt and holster for hands free transport and convenient storage for $129.
• Looj 150 - The same package as the 130 plus extra batter pack with an additional 3-stage auger for $169.

Alienware DLP RPTV

Alienware unveiled at the CES Dell booth a prototype 42" wraparound monitor. This screen has a resolution of 2880x900 and is designed to mimic the full peripheral vision that the human is capable of viewing. It is designed to make multiple display obsolete by providing a wide arc display. No word if or when this will be available.

Free EA Mobile Games

EA Mobile will give away 3 different games for your BlackBerry for free after CES. Check their Mobile Site after this Friday. They will be giving away: Skate, Medal of Honor and SimCity

CES 2008 Day 2 Roundup

I posted yesterday about all the huge LCD and Plasma TVs that all the manufactures are displaying here. Today I went to the Panasonic rolling display in the parking lot and spoke with one of the exhibitors about their 103" Plasma HDTV that is already out in the market. He told me that the only way to currently buy this TV is directly from Panasonic and it will cost you $70,000 including delivery and installation (not sure if it includes tax...). He said that they already sold over 3,000 of these worldwide.

 

Monster Cable and Dr. Dre teamed to release a the "Beats". This is a $399 headphone which features a unique design and a newly developed sonic technology. These expensive headphones come in a nice looking case that includes an anti-microbial cleaning cloth, quarter-inch adapter, iPhone mic adapter (the Monster iSonitalk) and Monster cables.

 

BlackBerry's CES site is up and running and offers free applications, games and some trials. Go to: http://www.blackberry.com/select/ces/. I went to their booth and they didn't too much to innovate, but they gave me a nice T-shirt and a cleaning cloth for the BlackBerry

Blu-ray and HD-DVD have big booths one next to each other and they both display the capabilities of the technologies to try and shift the advantage to their side. Right before CES, Warner Brothers announced that it will stop creating HD-DVD content and will release Blu-ray DVDs exclusively. This are huge news as this means that 70% of the studios that create high definition content will release it on Blu-ray. I have to say that after seeing one next to each other I can see why Blu-ray is winning this "war" so far.

Hillcrest Labs demonstrated its system that enables users to control TVs and other media devices using a motion control remote with just 2 buttons and a scroll wheel.

D-Link unveiled the DSM-750 Medialounge Media Center Extender. This device uses a dual-band 802.11n wireless networking, which allows for the streaming of HD content. The Medialounge has no moving parts allowing a quiet operation. This extender works with Windows Media Center and already provides 21 content providers. Suggested retail price: $349.

Yahoo! Go 3.0 Beta

Yahoo! CEO and co-founder Jerry Yang unveiled the beta version of Yahoo! Mobile 3.0. The major announcement of this version is that it will be open to developers to create widgets. Go ahead and point your BlackBerry browser to http://mobile.yahoo.com/go and download the 962kb Beta to test it out.

CES 2008 Day 1 Roundup

The Consumer Electronic Show 2008 is open! More than 140,000 attendees from 140 countries are expected to attend this year. Over 2,700 exhibitors will show their latest technologies over more than 1.7 million net square feet of exhibit space.

Here's a roundup of the things that got my attention on Day 1:

iriver

I have to say that iriver surprised me with their whole new lineup of products. They presented very slick products with different functionality.

UNIT 2 - This is an all-in-one multimedia home networking device with a 7" touch screen. It has a great sleek and minimalist design. The device includes: audio, video, FM tuner, DVD player, Divx player, CD player, VOIP phone, VOIP video phone, SMS/MMS, Web browsing and Web mail. It has a 30GB HDD and 2GB NANDFLASH drive and also SD card reader and USB to expand storage. Built-in WiFi to stream media from your computer and more. No information as to when they will release this device.

 

MPLAYER SEASON II - This is a Disney branded MP3 player. It is very unique as it looks like a Mickey Mouse silhouette. It is very easy to operate and I'm sure will sell very well for kids especially in the Disney parks. 2 models available with either 1 GB or 2 GB of NAND Flash memory.

 

 

APLAYER - This is slick ultra high-end MP3 player with FM tuner. It looks like a USB dongle so you just plug it to the PC to synchronize and thin as a credit card. It has a sophisticated metal finish and comes in either 1, 2, 4 or 8 GB of NAND Flash memory.

They presented many more devices like MP4 players, E-dictionaries, PMPs and navigation devices.

 

Neonode

The Swedish Neonode cellular phone is finally coming to the USA. You can think of this cellular phone as a "Nano iPhone". It is an extremely small phone with a touch screen (Neno user interface) that allows you to drag your finger over the screen to control the different functions. It is a GSM Quadband phone with a 2" LCD screen, 3.2 Megapixel fixed focus camera and Bluetooth. It is not official yet, but the presenter in the booth told me that they'll probably start selling the phone through T-Mobile and also unlocked through different retailers. You can watch the full Neonode demo video.

 

Plasma / LCDs

All major manufactures presented large high definitions plasma and LCD screens going all the way to 150" (Panasonic). The quality of  display is getting more and more real and in some booths where they are showing a real video input of a vase with flowers it is amazing to see that the picture on TV is better than the real thing . All the future displays focus on the quality of picture but more importantly the thickness of the TV. Companies  like Sharp and Pioneer presented displays that are only 23 millimeters thick!! They look amazing with a contrast of 100,000:1!

Samsung

Samsung had a big display area with everything they make, but what caught my eye was the second Bang & Olufsen cellular phone they developed. This cellular phone is a very slick design and a track wheel that feels similar to an iPod. It comes with a paired slick headset and will cost you "only" $1,600.

Billy G Has Left The Building

I just got out of the last keynote that Bill Gates will deliver in CES has he steps down from his full time role in Microsoft this July. Bill always likes to make fun of himself on these keynotes and this time they opening video decided to focus on what his last day in office would look like. It was pretty funny to see what senior people at Microsoft said about him and the different celebrities that he got to participate in this, from Steven Spielberg, Bono, George Clooney, Jay-Z all the way to Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama.

You can watch the clip here:

The presentation focused on what is currently available (Zune, XBox and Microsoft Surface) and what Microsoft envisions fro the next digital decade focused on the different Live services with a single sign-on. Gates also announced a major accomplishment for Microsoft as NBC selected the Silverlight platform to deliver the digital video coverage of Beijing 2008 Olympics. This service will provide over 3,000 hours of online video that can be customized according to your taste.

On the digital entertainment front Robbie Bach presented Zune and it's key differences from the iPod. A new Zune Card service was presented to give you a better social network experience to discover additional music you might like (and buy of course...). Bach also revealed that Microsoft Xbox will be the central media piece in your living room delivering on-demand video from MGM and ABC/Disney through the Xbox Live service.

Many other things were presented like Microsoft Sync and Microsoft Mediaroom. You can see it all in the Microsoft CES site. Of course the keynote couldn't end without a on stage celebrity. This time it was Slash that came to play live with his guitar and compete with the Guitar Hero III world champion.

WN 1945: RDU-LAS

7:15 in the morning and I'm on my way to CES 2008 in Las Vegas. I decided this time to get the Southwest flight which is the only direct flight form Raleigh to Las Vegas and also pretty convenient since it arrives 9:30 am and gives you a full day in the city to enjoy before the convention starts. When I got the boarding area I was introduced to the new boarding system that Southwest implemented and I have to say that it has it's positive things and also negative things.

The good thing is that with the new system that each person has a number assigned you don't have to stand in your line (A/B/C) an hour before the boarding to try and get a normal seat, the bad thing is that for each boarding group they arrange in the boarding area ~50 people in groups of 5 according to their assigned number and there's simply not enough room in the boarding area to do this. Once people stand in their spot in the line I have to say that the boarding goes pretty fast. People simply walk according to the line and seat in the first available spot they see.